Trinidad and Jamaica and Belize Put on Notice: Prolonged States of Emergency Erode Rights, IACHR Warns

Port of Spain has grown used to living under a state of emergency. Since December 2024, Trinidad and Tobago has spent roughly ten of the past fourteen months under emergency powers, with Parliament renewing the declaration again and again as the country battles a stubborn murder rate. But now the hemisphere's leading human rights body is telling the region plainly: prolonged states of emergency do not come free.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has formally pressed Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Belize over their repeated reliance on states of emergency, warning in its 2025 annual report that the measures carry real consequences for fundamental rights and freedoms — including the rights to expression, association and personal liberty.

What the Commission Said

In its 2025 annual report, published earlier this year, the IACHR observed with concern the continued reliance on states of emergency across the three Caribbean nations. The Commission said the practice raised serious questions about the impact of emergency measures on ordinary citizens, particularly the right to free expression, the right to peaceful assembly and association, and the right to personal liberty — protections that sit at the heart of democratic life.

The concerns were underlined again on 16 June 2026, when the IACHR issued a formal press release from Washington DC reiterating its unease. The Commission acknowledged that states have a clear duty to guarantee citizen security and to combat organised crime — a responsibility every Caribbean government takes seriously, given the region's rates of violent crime. But it stressed that emergency measures must remain exceptional, temporary and proportionate, and that the protection of public safety cannot be allowed to ride roughshod over the constitution.

For Caribbean readers, the message lands close to home. This is not a distant European court lecturing from afar; it is the Inter-American human rights system, of which Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Belize are all members, speaking directly about their own domestic security policies.

Trinidad and Tobago: The Emergency That Keeps Renewing

Trinidad and Tobago's experience sits at the centre of the Commission's concern. The state of emergency was first declared on 30 December 2024, following a surge in violent crime that had shaken communities across the country. What was presented as a temporary measure has since been renewed multiple times, with the House of Representatives voting 26-12 in March 2026 to extend the emergency for a further three months, and further extensions following.

The Government has defended the approach with hard numbers. Emergency powers have been credited with a 42 per cent fall in murders in 2025, and the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service's own "State of Emergency Effectiveness Analysis" — which examined murder and serious crime data between January 2019 and May 2026 — reported significant reductions in violent crime during periods when the emergency was in force.

For many Trinidadians, the trade-off is personal. There is genuine relief that communities can move more freely, that late-night lime is a little safer, that the murder toll that once made international headlines has come down. But there is also unease about what living under emergency powers for more than a year does to a society — about curfews, about detention without charge, about the quiet erosion of freedoms that most citizens take for granted.

It is that unease the IACHR has now given voice to, and the timing is significant. The Commission's warning arrives just as the Government has signalled it intends to follow Jamaica's example by introducing Zones of Special Operations (ZOSOs) — a framework that would extend special police powers beyond the life of the emergency itself.

Belize and Jamaica: Neighbours in the Same Boat

Trinidad and Tobago is not alone in facing the Commission's scrutiny. Belize declared a state of public emergency on 8 May 2026, covering large sections of Belize City and several communities in the Belize District, as gang violence and a surge in murders continued to claim lives. The proclamation, signed by Governor-General Dame Froyla Tzalam, granted law enforcement special powers under Statutory Instruments Nos. 49 and 50 of 2026 — powers that police commissioners insisted would be "limited" and "carefully enforced".

Jamaica, meanwhile, has become the regional reference point for the ZOSO model. The island has used zones of special operations and targeted states of emergency in high-crime communities for years, with supporters pointing to measurable reductions in murders in the affected areas. Critics, however, have long argued that the zones concentrate police powers in predominantly poor, predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that the stigma of living in a designated zone falls hardest on law-abiding residents.

In Trinidad and Tobago, that warning has already been sounded domestically. Port of Spain South MP Keith Scotland argued earlier this year that the designation of zones of special operation would worsen the stigmatisation faced by law-abiding residents of crime hotspots — a concern that echoes the IACHR's own findings almost word for word.

The Balancing Act: Security and Civil Liberties

The central question the Commission has placed before the region is deceptively simple: how does a small state protect its citizens from violent crime without surrendering the constitutional rights that define it as a democracy?

Criminologist Akinee Harry, speaking with the Trinidad Express, put the tension plainly. "Every democratic state has both a duty to protect its citizens from violent crime and an equally important duty to safeguard constitutional rights. These responsibilities should not be viewed as competing objectives."

That balancing act is harder in the Caribbean than in larger states with deeper institutional cushions. A small police force, limited forensic capacity, gang networks that move across borders with ease, and the sheer intimacy of island life all make emergency powers look attractive as a quick, decisive response. But the IACHR's concern is that quick responses, repeated often enough, become permanent features of governance — and that citizens begin to accept extraordinary powers as ordinary.

The Commission has not called for the immediate abolition of states of emergency. It has called for them to be used properly: as genuinely exceptional measures, subject to judicial oversight, with clear time limits, and with full respect for due process. It has also called on the three governments to demonstrate that emergency powers are achieving their goals in a way that ordinary policing could not.

What This Means for the Region

For the wider Caribbean, the IACHR's warning carries weight beyond the three named countries. Across CARICOM, governments wrestling with gang violence, illicit firearms and the social fallout of inequality have watched the Trinidad and Tobago experiment closely. If emergency powers can bring murders down, the thinking goes, why not adopt them more broadly?

The Commission's answer is a caution: because the rights they suspend are the same rights that hold democracies together, and because small island states — already vulnerable to external shocks, economic pressure and climate events — cannot afford to let the rule of law become a casualty of the crime fight.

There is also a regional solidarity angle that should not be missed. When the IACHR speaks to three Caribbean states in one report, it is speaking to the region as a whole. The Caribbean has spent decades demanding respect for its sovereignty and its people on the world stage; how its governments treat their own citizens' rights is now part of that conversation.

What Happens Next

None of the three governments has announced an immediate change of course. In Trinidad and Tobago, the state of emergency has been renewed repeatedly — with the Government seeking a further three-month extension in June — and the ZOSO legislation is still being worked through. In Belize, the May declaration was initially set for a limited period, with authorities insisting the powers would be used carefully. In Jamaica, the ZOSO model continues to be expanded in select communities.

But the IACHR's 2025 annual report is now public, its June press release is on the record, and the Commission has shown it is willing to keep pressing. Caribbean governments would be wise to treat the warning as what it is: an early signal that the region's human rights record is being watched, and that the case for emergency powers must be made anew — with evidence, with oversight, and with respect for the rights of the very people those powers are meant to protect.

For Trinidadians looking on, the hope is that the debate stays honest: that security and liberty are not treated as enemies, but as two sides of the same national project. As the criminologist reminded the country, one does not have to be sacrificed for the other to work.

By Sharon Sahatoo, Staff Writer

This article was produced with AI-assisted research and editorial support. Sources: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), OAS press release (June 2026), Trinidad Express, Caribbean360, Trinidad and Tobago Police Service, Bloomsbury Institute.